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Being an ethical leader during the apocalypse: Lessons from the walking dead to face the COVID-19 crisis

This article draws on Gareth Morgan’s theory of organizational metaphors. Using imaginization, this research examines practices of ethical leadership during a crisis, using The Walking Dead television series as a reference. The Walking Dead offers an artistic representation of different leadership s...

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Autores principales: Allal-Chérif, Oihab, Guijarro-García, María, Ballester-Miquel, José Carlos, Carrilero-Castillo, Agustín
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9754794/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36540061
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.05.008
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author Allal-Chérif, Oihab
Guijarro-García, María
Ballester-Miquel, José Carlos
Carrilero-Castillo, Agustín
author_facet Allal-Chérif, Oihab
Guijarro-García, María
Ballester-Miquel, José Carlos
Carrilero-Castillo, Agustín
author_sort Allal-Chérif, Oihab
collection PubMed
description This article draws on Gareth Morgan’s theory of organizational metaphors. Using imaginization, this research examines practices of ethical leadership during a crisis, using The Walking Dead television series as a reference. The Walking Dead offers an artistic representation of different leadership styles, with business organizations likened to groups of survivors. Its post-apocalyptic setting offers something of an analogy to the COVID-19 crisis. Each firm’s struggle for survival in the face of external threats is paralleled with each community’s struggle to protect members’ lives, preserve resources, and pursue development. The practices of the leaders in the program are compared to those of the leaders of firms such as P&G, Boeing, GM, Renault-Nissan, IBM, BP, GE, Berkshire Hathaway, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Ali Baba, Netflix, Airbnb, Uber, and SpaceX. This paper illustrates why ethical leadership goes far beyond charisma and competencies to involve deep motivations and sincere emotions and why it is accessible to everyone through a process of learning and transformation. The study shows the need to adapt leadership style to context. Good leaders know when to step back, meditate, and be lucid. They balance consultation and initiative. They do not fear other leaders and mentor new ones.
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spelling pubmed-97547942022-12-16 Being an ethical leader during the apocalypse: Lessons from the walking dead to face the COVID-19 crisis Allal-Chérif, Oihab Guijarro-García, María Ballester-Miquel, José Carlos Carrilero-Castillo, Agustín J Bus Res Article This article draws on Gareth Morgan’s theory of organizational metaphors. Using imaginization, this research examines practices of ethical leadership during a crisis, using The Walking Dead television series as a reference. The Walking Dead offers an artistic representation of different leadership styles, with business organizations likened to groups of survivors. Its post-apocalyptic setting offers something of an analogy to the COVID-19 crisis. Each firm’s struggle for survival in the face of external threats is paralleled with each community’s struggle to protect members’ lives, preserve resources, and pursue development. The practices of the leaders in the program are compared to those of the leaders of firms such as P&G, Boeing, GM, Renault-Nissan, IBM, BP, GE, Berkshire Hathaway, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Ali Baba, Netflix, Airbnb, Uber, and SpaceX. This paper illustrates why ethical leadership goes far beyond charisma and competencies to involve deep motivations and sincere emotions and why it is accessible to everyone through a process of learning and transformation. The study shows the need to adapt leadership style to context. Good leaders know when to step back, meditate, and be lucid. They balance consultation and initiative. They do not fear other leaders and mentor new ones. Elsevier Inc. 2021-09 2021-05-16 /pmc/articles/PMC9754794/ /pubmed/36540061 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.05.008 Text en © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Allal-Chérif, Oihab
Guijarro-García, María
Ballester-Miquel, José Carlos
Carrilero-Castillo, Agustín
Being an ethical leader during the apocalypse: Lessons from the walking dead to face the COVID-19 crisis
title Being an ethical leader during the apocalypse: Lessons from the walking dead to face the COVID-19 crisis
title_full Being an ethical leader during the apocalypse: Lessons from the walking dead to face the COVID-19 crisis
title_fullStr Being an ethical leader during the apocalypse: Lessons from the walking dead to face the COVID-19 crisis
title_full_unstemmed Being an ethical leader during the apocalypse: Lessons from the walking dead to face the COVID-19 crisis
title_short Being an ethical leader during the apocalypse: Lessons from the walking dead to face the COVID-19 crisis
title_sort being an ethical leader during the apocalypse: lessons from the walking dead to face the covid-19 crisis
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9754794/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36540061
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.05.008
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